


Strength/Weight Ratio

by Mithen



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:43:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Spine has done his research on metallurgy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength/Weight Ratio

He's done his research, in the Manor library (the library with its odd angles that fold in on themselves, the stairs that lead up and down at the same time). Dusty pages turned carefully by silver fingers. Metallurgy books with leather spines that crackle and sift organic dust when he opens them. He learned the facts early in his long life: he doesn't understand why the others ignore them.

Sometimes he wants to shake them until their gears creak, to say: _The melting point of titanium is 3,034 degrees Fahrenheit! The melting point of copper is only 1,984 degrees, and of brass a mere 900!_ But they're oblivious, they feel they are immortal, indestructible.

The density of brass and copper is nearly double that of titanium, so perhaps it should be no surprise.

He has no heart--a blessing, considering what he's read of its effects--but he feels odd impulses shudder along his (light, flexible, very strong) spine at the recklessness with which his siblings approach life. Images, memories come back at odd times. When he powers up, they are there in his short-term memory banks, as if somehow recently accessed:

Rabbit deciding to wander out into No Man's Land, walking back in the twilight across the mud and the bones with his arms full of scarlet poppies. The Jon turning cartwheels through a minefield while medical helicopters chop the air like screams overhead.

He remembers burning tanks on a blackened field. Metal melted and twisted beyond recognition. Gears scattered on the ground.

He feels once more the weight of Colonel Walter's hand on his shoulder from so long ago, his concerned face as Spine looked up from the book.

"What are you studying, son?"

"The strength/weight ratio of brass is 67.8." There was a grinding of gears in his throat. "The strength/weight ratio of copper is 24.7. _Twenty-four point seven_!" The number was unbearably low. "(N/m 2)/(kg/m3)," he muttered, looking down at the pages again, unsure if he'd be understood.

After a moment, the Colonel squeezed his shoulder. "Well, that's why I made you, isn't it? Because the strength/weight ratio of titanium is a whopping 288." The Spine looked up, and Colonel Walter winked at him.

Now he always makes sure he is the last to power down at night. He watches their photoreceptors dim in the darkness, blue and green fading away. He checks their diagnostics and hears--so strange, as his titanium tympani register no sound waves--the Colonel's voice again:

"Someone had to be the strongest, right? Not every robot has a titanium alloy spine, my boy."

He straightens it in the darkness, watching over his glitchy, irresponsible, irreplaceable siblings. Being as strong as possible, bearing the weight.


End file.
